Friday, April 8, 2011

The iPad And Every One Else

Like many companies these days, Clorox is now giving their employees their choice of company issued phones, with both Android and iOS being the two leading choices, leaving phones from BlackBerry, and others, the big losers.

Out of some two thousand Clorox employees, for example, a whopping 92% of them picked the iPhone 4 over the two remaining choices, namely Android and Windows Mobile 7, which saw 6% going to Android and the remaining 2% choosing Windows Mobile 7.

When it comes to the tablet space iOS and Android, more-or-less, pretty much sums up the choices of the Clorox employees above. Not only does iOS, with the iPad, command more than 70 or more percent of all tablet sales, but according to CNet, it also dominates the choice of retailers when it comes to advertising and display space. As you can see from the opening photo, via CNet, the iPad clearly gets unique billing, where as all of the other tablets are simply lumped together as mere tablets, diminishing their over all value in comparison. CNet points out that the above photo "hints at the challenge facing Motorola and other tablet makers...." when competing with the iPad's now dominant position.

If it's hard for other tablets to compete with the iPad for retailer's attention, they at least hope that they can compete by offering higher specs, and if that doesn't work, then by offering lower prices, something that they have thus far failed to do. Acer, however, is squarely gunning for the iPad by lowering the price of its new 10-inch Tab Iconia A500, for the reported low price of $450.... $49 lower than the iPad's base price.

The new tablet boasts some pretty impressive specs too, like a 1GHz Tegra 250 SOC, a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 LCD screen, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of flash storage, a 5 megapixel camera around back and a 2 megapixel imager up front, HDMI-out, among others. And yes, it will also feature Google's 'locked-down, and half-baked' Honeycomb Android OS to boot. Something tells me that Acer's lower price comes at a high cost.... mainly they are, most likely, losing money on each and every tablet sold!

Despite the fact that the iPad 2 now dominates both the retailer's attention and the lion-share of all tablet sales, many believe that the days of the iPad dominance is soon be coming to an end. It almost seems as if they believe that there is some kind of law that states that anyone other than Apple can eventually succeed. Apparently this is because they have been brainwashed into believing that Apple is ultimately bad because of its freakish control, and that others, and that goes especially for Google and its Android platform is ultimately good and will prevail simply because it is open and free. The truth is that Android is a patent-plagued OS rather and anything but really open and free. The so-called notion is that anyone who buys into Apple's 'wall garden' are all basically brain washed, and nothing more than mere Mactards from drinking Apple's 'kool-aid'! Well, as far as I'm concerned, these people are nothing but people who themselves have all been brain washed after drinking, likewise, Microsoft's and Goolge's own flavor of 'kool-aid'.

For legal reasons alone, I have my doubts that Google's Android will even survive, let alone ultimately triumph considering all of the patent mess it has woven itself into, which is is probably why Google is desperately willing to spend up to $900 million or more to buy Nortel's old patent port-folio in hopes of helping to defend themselves against Apple, Oracle and others patent claims.

In conclusion, iOS and Android may now be the two top mobile OS's, but the notion that Android is 'open and free', and therefore it will eventually prevail over iOS is nothing but a lot of bunk, pure and simple. Apple's iOS is off to a running start and if anybody thinks that Google's locked-down, fake open-platform will ultimately win, well they are delusional and have been drinking the Google/Android kool-aid for a little too long.

And that's my 2 cents 4 my last post of the this week, Friday, April 8, 2011